Sonification Workstation

Abstract

Sonification Workstation is an open-source application for general sonification tasks, designed with ease-of-use and wide applicability in mind. Intended to foster adoption of sonification across disciplines, and increase experimentation with sonification by non-specialists, Sonification Workstation distills tasks useful in sonification and encapsulates them in a single software envi-ronment. The novel interface combines familiar modes of navigation from Digital Audio Workstations, with a highly simplified patcher interface for creating the sonification scheme. Further, the software associates methods of sonification with the data they sonify, in session files, which will make sharing and reproducing sonifications easier. It is posited that facilitating experimentation by non-specialists will increase the potential growth of sonification into fresh territory, encourage discussion of sonification techniques and uses, and create a larger pool of ideas to draw from in advancing the field of sonification. Source code is available at https://github.com/Cherdyakov/sonification-workstation. Binaries for macOS and Windows, as well as sample content, are available at http://sonificationworkstation.org.